FUNNY BUSINESS

Scenes from the life and career of one of the 20th century’s most famous satirists.

Art Buchwald (1925-2007) once wrote, “The satirist has his job laid out. He must wake people up so they will wake themselves.” Few journalists of his time woke up readers as effectively and hilariously. His 50-year career began when he talked his way into a job at the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune even though his only experience was as a part-time stringer reviewing films and plays for Variety. At the peak of his influence, his column appeared in 550 newspapers in 100 countries and was read by Washington power brokers, including presidents. Not bad for a Jewish kid from New York who didn’t grow up in the usual political-leader demographic and who spent years in foster homes after his mother was committed to an asylum. In this affectionate book, Hill tells the story of Buchwald’s fascinating life, marked by bouts of depression that required hospitalization, through a selection of his funniest articles and speeches and previously unpublished correspondence with members of the Kennedy family, William F. Buckley Jr., P.G. Wodehouse, and others. Except for a long section on Buchwald’s legal battle against Paramount—he sued them for stealing the idea that became the film Coming to America—the book is a series of short sections that focus on Buchwald’s friendships and writings. The result is a tapas bar of a text, bite-sized snacks that add up to a satisfying whole. It’s an incomplete picture—Hill mentions Buchwald’s play Sheep on the Runway but not his absurdist English-language contributions to the dialogue in Jacques Tati’s film Playtime—yet Buchwald fans will enjoy revisiting his work. Neophytes will get a taste of his style, as in the famous article “J. Edgar Hoover Just Doesn’t Exist,” in which Buchwald claimed the former FBI director was a “mythical person first thought up by Reader’s Digest.”

A heartfelt tribute to one of American journalism’s most influential jesters.